


A Pirate's Life For Me

by Betwixtyiff



Category: Echo (Visual Novel 2019)
Genre: Established Character Death, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, POV First Person, Sam's presence in the fic is only really hinted at/implied but he's there alright, Spoilers for Carl's route, Spoilers for Flynn's Route, Spoilers for Jenna's Route, Spoilers for TJ's Route, Spoilers for the Echo Project side story "Benefits", Stream of Consciousness, Sydney centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:47:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24596251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Betwixtyiff/pseuds/Betwixtyiff
Summary: Sydney Bronson was a pirate in life, and couldn't be brought over the river to the afterlife. His thoughts as an existence left in Echo after his death.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	A Pirate's Life For Me

**_I wish I could leave like you all could._ **

Still here guys!

Redundant I know. But hey when you’re dead you see yourself in different shoes. Not nearly as many as Carl had growing up though. Remember the light up ones he got at his eighth birthday? The ones that lit up and then faded out that costed like. $600?

Anyway.

Being dead, you wear yourself out. I know what Jas-er, Jenna would say now; “Sydney how do you expect to be tired when you’re dead?” Well! I’m not really. Not tired like. Sleepy anyway. More bored.

People talk about spirits roaming the Earth, but really? All I can do is roam the town. 

And lemme tell ya, if you guys thought this town was boring when we were kids just imagine being here and not being able to REALLY interact with anyone. And the few times you get to, people think you’re a drug induced hallucination. 

Which trust me, the novelty wears off faster than your friend having a fridge full of ice cream. 

Sure getting a good scare out of someone is fun on occasion as a ghost, but you miss the heart to heart moments you had with people you know? Even if you didn’t live long enough to have many.

I’ll tell ya though. Poking through Duke’s window trying to catch the wrestling match he was watching only for him to see me, and hearing him yell Chase’s last name after I’d disappeared was hella funny. 

Pretty much where being a ghost (?) peaks at though. 

Honestly? I missed everyone.

Sometimes, I’d just kind of go and sit with em. Invisible so they couldn’t see me. Like one of those pirate ghosts where you can only see their true form in the moonlight. Except I’m not a skeleton. And they never saw me. Well okay there were a few slip ups, but I think they chalked it up to anything and everything. 

* * *

  
Flynn was the first. And the most often. 

Right after I, well. Died. I spirited? Floated? I still don’t even know how this works. Over to his house and, I think then and there was the most sad I’d ever seen someone. I saw him cry, break a bunch of stuff in his room, even chuck his helmet out the window. The one he liked to trench crawl in when it was cool enough. And I heard him say... well, kind of a lot.

He said he hated our friends, hated this town, hated TJ for not doing anything, hated Chase for not getting in the water fast enough, hated Leo for not ‘trying hard enough’ with his compressions. 

And I heard him say other things too. 

He told me he wished he could have told me he liked me. Like, _liked me liked me_.

I felt bad for hearing that, like I wasn’t meant to, unless I was. Well. Not a fucking ghost. I left pretty soon after that.

I kept going back to see him though. Flynn seemed to get better. Slowly, over time. Or at least less sad when he was around others. Sometimes when he was alone, and feeling really bad; he’d have a conversation with me. Some make believe version of me.

He never knew, but every time he said something, I’d answer back, given him an honest opinion that’d never reach his lizard not ears. Told me years later he really liked Leo, but didn’t think it’d work because he thought Leo was straight as the lead in Carl’s $20 mechanical pencil. Oh boy was that a shock two years later when he found out the opposite. 

One time he told me he thought TJ killed me.

If I was alive, that would’ve been where I’d have made a joke about how the ‘demonic possession was coming from inside the otter’.

Flynn old buddy old pal, if only you knew. 

* * *

Next person I went to was mom. 

Might ask why I didn’t go to her first after you know, dying?

Not to say she and I had a bad relationship, but when dad got really bad towards the uh, towards the end, she stopped sticking up for me. Which I won’t lie, at the time I hated her for it, and wondered if she hated me too. But now I think I get it. She was as scared of dad as I was. 

In the aftermath of me, she. Broke. Losing your husband and son the same year does a number on ya. 

‘Kept going on how sorry she was, how she should’ve stuck up for me, how she wished she’d have told me she loved me before I left that day, or left dad, or sent me to live with a friend for a while. 

I told her I was sorry too. I still love you mommy.

She left. God I pleaded, begged her to stay. I didn’t want her to leave me. I even let her see me one night when she was drinking, she looked so happy to see me. Told me I was such a big boy, coming to cheer her up when she was sad. And I just kind of sat with her most of the night. She dug an old favorite movie of mine out of a cardboard box she had half packed up and put it on.

For a little bit, it was like nothing happened. She fell asleep a little after the movie ended, and I think that was the first good night's sleep she’d had in a long time.

It wasn’t enough to make her stay though. She forgot about the whole thing the next morning.

When everything was all packed up and she was finally leaving, she turned and took one last look at the inside of the house. Our house. I let her see me again, I knew it would probably be the last time I would see her. I ran to her. She ran to me. I disappeared to her. But I was still there, holding onto my mama like I could keep her there, like I could when she would go to work when I was really little and I’d be left alone with dad. And we just stood there. For a long while.

But finally, she left. Echo, and me. 

I think she said my aunt wasn't gonna be there right away so I just sat in my room or what used to be my room, and cried. Cried like I did that one time at my uncle’s ranch when I just wanted the summer to be over, for my parents to pick me up.

But nobody was coming to take me home.

I was home.

* * *

I finally left the house a bit before my aunt settled in. Didn’t really wanna see someone else’s family photo where my pirate poster used to be. Ya know, on top of everything.

Next I went over to see Jas-Jenna! Keep doing that, God.

Seemed right seeing as besides me, she probably had the worst time at home out of all our friends. Boooooy, lemme tell you that was another trip, the kind you spend some time on the ground after because a rock hit your funny bone and it stings.

I heard her say more than a few things, to Flynn, to Carl, to Chase, to Leo, to TJ the all of two times he was allowed over there probably. Which man did she up the mom-a-tude when Teej was concerned.

Not to mention all her diary entries. She liked to voice them out loud (or did before her dad took her door out because she was grounded), like she was in a movie or something. And she said Carl and I watched too much TV. Boy does she like writing about Chase, and hypothetical water balloons she’d love to dump on Leo.

Not to mention the way her family was like. Kind of in general. 

Imagine everything Flynn would think about saying to her in one of their arguments but hold himself back from. Plus other stuff.

Doesn’t really compare to her saying she was glad I was gone though.

That hurt.

Never said that to anyone out loud though so they didn’t have a chance to agree with her so there’s that I guess.

Won’t lie though, hanging around her was the first time I got scared after being dead.

A few times when she was writing in her diary, she’d mention this. Big, red, skeleton thing with a flat face, that she saw when she was a kid, drew a picture on the page for good measure too. Looked the same as that thing I saw when dad and I… went out.

All that basically amounted to my visits to Jenna (Ha! Got it right!) being a bit fewer than everyone else’s.

‘Specially after she left.

* * *

Carl’s house is something else.

You know apart from it being all old and huge and with lots of stuff my dad said we couldn’t afford or couldn’t have because I was bad. His parents one year had a waterbed. A waterbed! They’d never let us on it, even though it was so fun. If you put something under you while you were on it, and sat there and kind of bounced in place, the ripples would make you feel like you were on a boat. The couple times we were on it, I got to play pirate. And really feel like it too. Flynn was my first mate, and I made Carl my navigator since it was his parent’s bed. I led us all one time off the bed and through his house, and down to the basement. ‘Cause I’d hidden a scavenger hunt down there. We didn’t stay too long down there though, even with it being nice, Carl’s basement could get creepy.

That went on for one summer, until Flynn scared TJ and his claws came out and popped the bed. I knew Carl’s mom was upset, but she just kept reassuring TJ it was fine, ‘cause he was crying.

While we were all waiting in Carl’s room, Carl’s dad came in and said to us all, don’t tell Carl’s mom but he was glad that bed popped because it was hurting his back at night! Guess I never thought about sleeping on it.

The joke is that someone who wound up drowning never thought of sleeping on a water bed.

Anyway.

Carl’s house is fucking haunted.

I know, rich coming from a ghost right? Well I wasn’t the only ghost there. Those ghost hunters on TV always bring in a psychic who freezes up the second they come in the house because of the “evIlLLLlLl sPIiIIIIiIIIiIirrrRRRiIIIIiittTtTTTss OOOooOoooOOooo”. And it looks fake as hell.

Well for this otter ghost, it was 100% real.

There’s at least two other ghosts here. And they both hate each other. I mean really hate each other. I found out their names are James and John, and they both talk like cowboys.

One time Carl’s mom had asked him to digitize all their old home movies while they were on some yacht cruise. Which, lemme tell you; seeing yourself at age six onscreen is weird. Especially when you’re getting badmouthed out earshot from behind the camera by the father of the friend whose birthday party you were at. So Carl was at his computer and I was there next to him, when there was this weird bumping sound from below us. 

Carl had been smoking quite a bit by now and was totally out of his mind, grabbed one of the wooden katana next to the desk and crept out of his room and down the stairs, me right behind him because even as a ghost some things still surprise you.

Cue one loud noise, one screaming ram, two deep voices from the basement, and you have one crying Carl crying on the floor, tappers shaking as he lights up a joint.

Sticking around Carl’s house some days, I learned the two ghost’s names were John and James. James being I think Carl’s great great something uncle? John being someone I couldn’t get much out of and didn’t hear much out of. Either way, these two hated each other. Like I thought my parents fought. These two made them seem like. Well, Flynn and Jenna.

I won’t lie though that wasn’t what made hanging around Carl’s house hard, not all the way anyway. It was seeing what Carl was becoming.

He used to be pretty, outgoing? I dunno, he was still a quiet kid but less so than now. Now so much of his time was just spent shut in. He’d light one up, turn on his computer or TV, and some days he’d seldom talk to anyone, especially after a bit in high school. It made me sad to see, Flynn and I were the closest in the group but I always liked Carl. He was someone you could really joke with as long as you didn’t go too far.

It wasn’t much better after he came back from college. 

He kept hovering his mouse over everyone’s screen names while he was sober, sometimes only ever able to click on em and type a “hey” to ‘em when he was high.

Like one time he invited Flynn over after one such joint, and. Well. I’ll just say I didn’t expect that of Carl, and if it leads anywhere?

I’ll be happy for ‘em both.

* * *

I won’t say TJ was the hardest to go see because he wasn’t.

It was still hard though.

When I was alive, I made his life hell. And he didn’t need it. Not that I was quote unquote there for the last six months of it but still, for what was before that? It was awful, I was awful. So going to his house and sitting in with him some days was. Both hard and unexpectedly easy sometimes.

He still cried a lot. Harder than I’d seen him cry too. I won’t lie, it got contagious and I cried sometimes too. Guess ghosts have feelings after all, huh Flynn? 

That reminds me, one of the few times Teej and I ever really talked like friends and not bullies was this one time in first grade.

It was summer and we were all walking from the convenience store to Leo’s house, and we heard these really strained croaking noises. We saw this huge bird on the side of the road. Leo said it might be a golden eagle, which didn’t really matter as we didn’t know what to do since it looked pretty bad. We didn’t have much choice because after about two minutes or so it tried feebly to flap its wings and then went still. We all kind of stood there for a bit. TJ cried, I cried, Jenna cried, and Carl and Chase did too. Only Leo and Flynn kept their eyes dry but they still looked pretty sad.

When we finally got to Leo’s house and told his mom what happened she made us all some sandwiches and asked if we wanted to go home. We said no.

I think that, as twisted and fucked up as it was, was a real bonding experience for our group. You don’t look at death and then cry over it together and not feel something right?

But after a bit I didn’t see Teej in the house anywhere, I looked outside the back patio door and saw him sitting out there on one of the plastic chairs Leo’s dad had bought. I went out and sat in the chair next to him, we didn’t say anything, just sat together.

There I go, going off again.

TJ said a lot of horrible things about himself, more than I’d have expected coming from him. And I won’t lie, there was a sick part of me that said “ha”. Because some part of me hated him because… because I was jealous. He had a religious family, one who loved him too, everyone liked him, and because he was so nice too. Every time I did something bad to him, he’d act like nothing happened the next day. I remember being so scared. Why didn’t he hate me? Part of me wanted him to. For everything I’d done.

_Anyway._

He said God wouldn’t ever forgive him for what he helped do, that he’d be going to hell for having seen a demon and not telling anyone (wasn’t sure what that was about at the time), and on one occasion years later thinking he’d burn because he admitted to himself that he like guys as much as he liked girls.

Won’t lie, that was a shock.

Not as much as his parents bringing one of his youth group leaders over to talk to him once about, well about me. He glossed over one pretty big thing, but one thing that made me stop in place (as much as a ghost can), was that he mentioned seeing something tall, red, and burned looking with a flat face at the lake that day, before _it_ happened. Just like Jenna had.

I could tell from the priest’s face he didn’t believe TJ. Just said it was a test from God, and to remember to pray. Heard him telling Teej’s parents he should see a therapist, and hell maybe he should. But after what Jenna said? I think that with that at least he was telling the truth.

What really cut me up inside was later that night, he liked to pray before bed, like a good Christian boy. He prayed for God to let him into heaven, for his friends to be too, and the last thing he said before his “amen” was “I’m sorry Sydney.” Then he got into bed, and after a while, fell asleep.

I’m sorry too Toby, and I forgive you.

* * *

To say Leo and I weren’t close is… well it's an understatement.

He was always off with Chase and Jenna, I was always off with Flynn, and sometimes Carl, and on the off Chance he got gutsy, TJ. But that was only a few times.

The few times Leo and I ever got the chance to really hang out were the times his dad would buy those really bad movies from in town, and we’d all come over and watch like. Five or six in one night in his living room. Sometimes I’d be first one up or last to go to sleep and Leo would be up with me. We didn’t really have much to say to each other despite being in the same friend group, so we’d just. Talk about the movie or some new game we got to play at Carl’s or something.

Even though we didn’t really have a relationship really, it still hurt when he seemed to just want to forget about me.

Especially since he was the one to, you know, do the one-two-three breathe thing on my chest when I drowned.

I saw when he huddled everyone together before the first day of school, vowed to protect everyone, everyone said my name and something about me wanting them to go on, which honestly? I really wanted them to see the newest Pirates of Deep Blue movie so they could talk about it and I could hear what happened because in the months leading up to my dad dying, I was so hyped to see that movie you don’t even know.

But, anyway. Leo never mentioned me that day.

Beyond a tearful apology to my mom,? Nothing. And boy was that a doozy. He came up to her all by himself when he was still struggling to learn English. And told her how sorry he was he couldn’t protect her son. It was pretty soon after what happened and I think mom was just, beyond wordy grief at that point. All I think she could do was what she did, which was put a paw on his shoulder and say it’s okay, with a lost look on her face.

And any time one of our friends brought me up, Leo would just change the subject and say something like “let's put the past behind us yeah?”

Again, just like Jenna, that hurt.

Sometimes it just felt like he wanted to move away from the group entirely. In high school he joined the football team and stopped hanging with Carl, Jenna, Chase and TJ much. Felt quashed a bit after that Day of the Dead party where after a long walk he showed up with Chase and announced they were boyfriends.

Which honestly still feels weird.

* * *

Chase and I had… always had a weird relationship.

We were the only two in our group who were the same species so we kind of got lumped into the same things a lot one way or another. In school we’d just get ‘designated’ together because we were both otters, by our parents at birthday parties too, even sometimes when we were all playing despite him being closer to a lot more of the group.

Which lemme say? I was always captain, when we were doing my treasure hunts, he was my first mate.

Again, I wasn’t a nice kid a lot of the time. And the times I took it whatever I was feeling out on TJ showed. Especially after dad died. Like, looking back I got… really really bad. Let a lot more loose in the worst ways. Felt like I had choices to make when things happened, but a lot of my inhibitions for being bad just went away.

Sometimes, Chase had had enough.

One time he went with me to help with a scavenger hunt near the train cars. We were almost there when he pushed me down. I didn’t fight it or yell, I knew I did something bad and could’ve really hurt TJ. Chase started asking me how I liked it, if I thought it was okay to treat TJ like that. When I finally turned around I saw something that really scared me. Still scares me too.

Chase had the same look in his eyes that my dad did when he really got after me, and the look I know I’d get after dad died. Like it wasn’t him, but it was still.

Even knowing that I don’t know if I can forgive him for what I did at the lake. He was my friend. And possessed, or under the town’s influence or not, he still drowned me. And he made Toby lie to help cover it up. Even after supposedly hurting for so many years, after seeing him go through years of therapy himself, part of me still hates him for what he did to me. 

But another part of me still thinks of him as first mate to Captain Sydd, unwilling or not.

* * *

One time not too long after I died, I decided I really missed hanging out with everyone. And kind of, went along with everyone to the first movie night at Leo’s house since I’d died. Leo’s dad brought over a bunch of movies and the last one of the night ended up being ‘Heart of Darkness’. The night went pretty samey to how most did. Flynn complained the jungle would be too hot to move like that, Jenna covered TJ’s eyes during any really bloody parts while he covered his ears, Leo tried to race Carl over who could eat a slice of pizza faster (Carl won by the way), and Chase chimed in on everybody’s antics kind of quietly here and there. Eventually, everyone fell asleep because the movie was so long.

Went pretty samey except for the end of the night anyway.

Right around the time the movie ended with the one guy yelling “the horror!” (which is how you know this movie was made forever ago), Chase got up. At first I thought he might’ve been sleepwalking because he was moving so weird, like how you move when your legs fall asleep and you have to zombie walk for a little while? But looking at his face, he seemed like he was pretty awake.

He got into the bathroom and just kind of stood in there for a bit. Then he walked up to the sink and gripped the front part of it, you know like how people do in superhero movies right before they transform?

But Chase just, kept on holding on to the sink and staring into the mirror. I don’t know if he was looking for something but eventually I saw something.

The way Chase looked in the mirror looked like it, shifted almost?

His fur looked lighter even under Leo’s parent’s bright bathroom lights, he looked almost less otter for a minute, and more like a cat briefly, nose looking more triangular, his ears having a soft triangular taper to them almost and his eyes even looked like they changed color from his yellowy orange to a weird reddish color. 

I think this was when I got so scared (I know right? I’m supposed to be a ghost) I accidentally revealed myself to Chase in the mirror. I realized my mistake quick enough and when he turned around I was back to less than invisible. 

He looked pretty freaked out when he turned around and I think that stopped whatever was happening. Because he un-hunched his shoulders and walked all normal back to his sleeping bag next to Leo and TJ and went back to sleep pretty quick, and had a pretty normal morning after a sleepover at Leo’s after.

That weird red color of his eyes, the change in his behavior, the look on his face when he held me underwater… They make me think that whatever is Chase… well, isn’t Chase. Sometimes he’d get these weird looks whenever he was presented with a choice, like he wasn’t all there. Just like dad got before he’d yell at me.

And just like how I’d get before I died.

Like there was something inside of us.

Making us stop and really think before we did anything, giving us the illusion of choice, but then making us make some awful choice.Like the town got to us, but more personal. 

This thing, whatever it is, is evil. It made my dad, my friend, and me all evil.

I heard from listening to Carl and Flynn talk recently that there was gonna be a ‘reunion’ of sorts in a few weeks. Leo was planning it all, Chase was gonna do a school project about the town and would be coming here to film stuff and research. As weird as I feel about them, they’re still my friends. And I’m gonna do everything I can to ensure they don’t get hurt.

Watch out ghosts, Ghost Pirate Captain Sydd the Kidd is plundering the seas again.

**_Look out me hearties yo, ho._ **

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first bit of writing I've done in quite awhile and wow I'm actually really proud of myself?
> 
> Sydney as a character always drew me in, from the very first mention in Echo's prologue and over time as the story updated, I grew more and more in love with him the more we learned about him. I tried to capture the vibe of someone who despite having "grown up" a bit as a ghost was still a kid on the inside and still retained that air of trying to sound more mature than they are and wound up sounding a bit childish in the process.
> 
> As with all fics I love reviews and I'd love to hear thoughts on this, especially given Sydney's status as a character who doesn't get much in the vein of screen time in the project.


End file.
